Striking a blow against fascism with commentary on current events, finance, economics, politics, music, art, culture and how to deal with our economic lives being bartered away by the elites who have our financial future all figured out: We'll be paying off their debts forever.

If you like what you read here, please make a donation to Pottersville2. Peace to all and let's work to end the wars.

"We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth." - Sydney Schanberg

"The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft, / And gathering swallows twitter in the skies." - John Keats

"It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen ... The world will present itself to you for its unmasking." - Franz Kafka

"“We of the craft are all crazy,” wrote Lord Byron about himself and his fellow poets. “Some are affected by gaiety, others by melancholy, but all are more or less touched.”"

"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." - Albert Einstein

"In my lifetime we've gone from Eisenhower to George W. Bush. If this is evolution, I believe within twelve years we'll be voting for plants." - Lewis Black

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." – George Orwell

Senator Frank Church in 1975 chaired the Senate Hearings on the FBI’s Cointelpro operation, which spied upon and attempted to infiltrate, disrupt and discredit the peace movement. . . "if a dictator ever took over, (the NSA) could enable to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back. . . . That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. . . . I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."

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Conservative Animus

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Conservatism is the theoretical voice of this animus against the agency of the subordinate classes. It provides the most consistent and profound argument as to why the lower orders should not be allowed to exercise their independent will, why they should not be allowed to govern themselves or the polity. Submission is their first duty, agency, the prerogative of the elite.

Current Readers

Politicus USA on GOP Fascism

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The entire GOP apparatus is slipping toward fascism and millions of Americans have been indoctrinated to believe that the Bible none of them have read takes precedence over the Constitution none of them have read.

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Waiting for Grand Dad

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Eco Farm Shitakes, Squash, Kale - Cindi, Nicole & Eddie

Ukraine Disinformation Battle: Little Green Men, Hamsters and the Fog of War

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There has always been a gap in how media on both sides of the former Iron Curtain have reported world events, and it’s growing as the crisis in Ukraine escalates. It has become increasingly difficult to obtain reliable information from any side — west, east, or further east — about what is going on in Eastern Ukraine.
While powerful propaganda machines fill the public space with smoke and mirrors, one of the few facts that can be positively established in Eastern Ukraine is that the body count is steadily growing: a testament of just how easy it is for self-interested foreign powers to start, either intentionally or recklessly, a civil war in the heart of Europe. Continuing coverage is available at this link and this link.

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Red Roots Farm - Kristen & Jason - No Sprays/Delicious Veggies!

Fukushima, Japan Disaster Worsens and Spreads

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While the American reactor industry continues to suck billions of dollars from the public treasury, its allies in the corporate media seem increasingly hesitant to cover the news of post-Fukushima Japan. Continuing coverage is available at this link, this link, and this link.

My Blog Fights Climate Change

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Animal Rescue - Click Everyday!

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Paul Krugman:

I don’t think many people grasp just how raw, how explicit, the corruption of our institutions has become.

Yesterday I had a conversation with someone who, like me, spent most of the Bush years as a voice in the wilderness. And he pointed out something remarkable: although those of us who said the obvious — that the Bush administration was fundamentally monstrous — were ridiculed by all the respectable people at the time, at this point our narrative has become everyone’s narrative.

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Paul Craig Roberts:

_________________ US Media
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"Anyone who depends on print, TV, or right-wing talk radio media is totally misinformed. The Bush administration has achieved a de facto Ministry of Propaganda."

"The uniformity of the US media has become much more complete since the days of the cold war. During the 1990s, the US government permitted an unconscionable concentration of print and broadcast media that terminated the independence of the media.

Today the US media is owned by 5 giant companies in which pro-Zionist Jews have disproportionate influence. More importantly, the values of the conglomerates reside in the broadcast licenses, which are granted by the government, and the corporations are run by corporate executives — not by journalists — whose eyes are on advertising revenues and the avoidance of controversy that might produce boycotts or upset advertisers and subscribers.

Americans who rely on the totally corrupt corporate media have no idea what is happening anywhere on earth, much less at home."

_________________ War On Terror
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Roberts asked "Is the War on Terror a Hoax", and claims it has "killed, maimed, dislocated, and made widows and orphans of millions of Muslims in six countries". Roberts called the attacks "naked aggression" on civilian populations and infrastructure which constitute war crimes.

_________________ Republican Party
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Roberts is seriously dismayed by what he considers the Republican Party's disregard for the U.S. Constitution. He has even voiced his regret that he ever worked for it, avowing that, had he known what it would become, he would never have contributed to the Reagan Revolution.

_________________ American Democracy and Oligarchy
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Roberts has been increasingly critical of what he deems as the lessening of democracy in the U.S.; instead accusing it of being run by oligarchs by stating:

"The west prides itself that it is the standard for the world, that it is a democracy. But nowhere do you see democratic outcomes: not in Greece, not in Ireland, not in the UK, not here, the outcomes are always to punish the innocent and reward the guilty.

And that's what the Greeks are in the streets protesting. We see this all over the west. There is no democracy, there are oligarchies, some of these smaller European countries are not even run by their own governments, they are run by Wall Street... There is probably more democracy in China than there is in the west.

Revolution is the only answer... We are confronted with a curious situation. Throughout the west we think we have democracy, we hold ourselves up high, we demonize China, we talk about the mafia state of Russia, we talk about the Arabs and so on, but where is the democracy here?"

_________________ Farewell Speech
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"Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It,"

Roberts effectively announced his journalistic retirement. The article, published at Counterpunch.org, begins:

"There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest."

It proceeds to a bitter chronicle of the demise of American intellectual integrity, particularly that of financial journalists and economists. These have been thoroughly corrupted by monetary inducements to misrepresent and ignore what has been, in effect, the systematic dismantling of the nation's productive life, in the name of globalization.

He holds the members of his own journalistic profession largely responsible for abetting relentless outsourcing of American industry, thereby gutting the American middle class and effectively dooming the nation's future.

He describes his own ostracism from mainstream media access, the consequence of his relentless and unflinching criticism of the demolition process over the past decade. His column ends, "The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now run their course. As the pen is censored and its might extinguished, I am signing off."

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Cirze's World

Liberal?

"If by a 'Liberal' they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal,” then I’m proud to say I’m a “Liberal."

John F. Kennedy, 1960

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Citizen's United

"[T]his Court now concludes that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. That speakers may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that those officials are corrupt. And the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy."

Monday, May 25, 2015

[Been watching Noam Chomsky's talk with John Nichols of "The Nation" on LINK TV this weekend? You should. It has my highest recommendation for everyone, especially those who'd really like to figure out what's been happening in politics for the last 40 years (and insight on The Mondragón and Podemos successes). Dynamite TV!]

I've been reconsidering H.G. Welles' brilliant book War of the Worlds and the resulting movies, especially the panic-inducing 1938 radio broadcast that was narrated and directed by Orson Welles, the brilliant 1953 movie (and, yes, the Stephen Spielberg failure with Tom Cruise, currently on TNT, is surely at the bottom of the movie pit), and wondering if that half-alertness or almost zombie-likeness I'd detected in the characters (okay, maybe it's mainly Cruise' forte although Tim Robbins runs a strong second) can also be detected in our citizenry's response to important government pronouncements for the last several decades. Although all of us are running in panic-stricken fright from the plans for the TPP and our democracy's final demise at the hands of the neolib cons.

I've mentioned the huge jump in gasoline prices lately that has seemed to escape public commentary (not data mining though), but here's how that relates to the real world situation (or so it would seem in my mind's eye).

When Obama was elected and immediately we were treated to the implementation of the opposite of the policies on which he ran, I thought that it must mean that the fix was in. (Nothing else made sense, but every time I mentioned it to various political groupings I was accused of not understanding his eleventy-sided chess game against the real baddies.)

And then he ran. And won again. As if the voters had no choice but to choose someone who had already sold them out. Lesser Evilism it was pronounced (from on high).

Turns out that not only have the election choices (most probably) been fixed, but that almost all the figures from which citizens believe they make these decisions have also been fixed.

For a very long time.

Why wouldn't all of our candidates be also?

Got the following link from Paul Craig Roberts. Remember who he is?

This could be the most important hint we've received in decades. Just a hint, but this one with real numbers attached.

There’s no B.S. like the BLS – Dave Kranzler,Investment Research Dynamics

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the Consumer Price Index for April this morning. This Ministry of “Truth” published an inflation report that asserts that consumer inflation rose .1% month over month for April. But a further dissection of the numbers shows that the BLS has the price of gasoline falling 1.7% during April.

This is either a politically motivated act of fraud or complete incompetence on the part of the Government statisticians and data gatherers (the Census Bureau).

In fact, the price of gasoline rose over 12% during April – the fastest monthly rise in history:

As you can see, the price of gasoline rose from $1.77 to $2.00 during the month of April. Either the people running the BLS are complete incompetent idiots or have been given strict orders from above – i.e. the White House – to produce politically friendly economic reports. Let’s call the BLS “The Ministry of Disinformation.”

The BLS’ distortion of the data it reports is far greater and fraudulent that ANYONE is willing to admit, investigate or report.

Here’s what they did to gold after that fraud-filled CPI report was released (click to enlarge):

Any questions as to the political motivation behind the Government’s intentional release of fraudulent economic data?

Almost all the economic data from basically all governments on Earth are completely and totally false. I read the book, In The Plex, about Google and it’s founders and the father of Sergey Brin was a Soviet Economist. Brin’s father and his phD colleagues were tasked with constantly coming up with new formulas, equations and weightings to use statistics to lie to the Soviet people by the government. New formulas were constantly released and changed to show there was never any inflation in the Soviet Union and that the Soviet standard of living for individual regular citizens was much higher than the average middle class American. We are seeing a lot of this now from the US, UK, China, Japan, ECB, etc., except the difference is Wall St, mainstream academia, mainstream media and many sheeple who haven’t woken up yet believe all this information the government puts out. Soviet citizens didn’t believe anything the government said and most believed the exact opposite. There’s a lot of people who have blind faith in governments for doing the right thing and being mostly honest.

Dave
isnt it wonderful how almost everyday for the last 7 years the charts on Silver and Gold overlap at the same times day after day…take this week for example…http://www.kitco.com/charts/livesilver.html
a complete fucking farce…death to the moneychangers.

We had once imagined that human attention was infinitely divisible, with each particle of it potentially available to advertisers, entertainers, and employers. But it was turning out to be fragile, even endangered, and in need of constant repair.

Where brilliance and creativity had formerly reigned, there were, by the turn of the millennium, suspicions of pathology. Child psychiatrists began to drop “bipolarity” as a default diagnosis and turn their attention to attention itself. Too many children were deficient in it, just as their plugged-in parents were often guilty of “distracted parenting.”

The switch from bipolarity to attention deficit disorder is hard to date exactly, in part because these conditions are now said to be frequently “comorbid,” or overlapping. But as we began to spend more and more of our time interacting with mood-less programs and devices, psychiatry seems to have turned from emotional concerns like bipolarity, which is a “mood disorder,” to cognitive problems like ADD and ADHD.

At the same time, diagnoses of autism and Asperger’s syndrome were skyrocketing — especially, as a 2001 article in "Wired" pointed out, in Santa Clara County, home of Silicon Valley.

Among the adult population, surely something was wrong with Steve Jobs, who alternated between obsessive attention to details and complete withdrawal into himself, between a spiritual aloofness and uncontrolled temper tantrums. Some observers thought they detected a hint of autism in the unblinking, almost affect-free Bill Gates, and the characters in HBO’s "Silicon Valley" are portrayed as well “within the spectrum.”

So Silicon Valley embraced mindfulness with a twinge of contrition. Not only did its corporate culture encourage something called “geek syndrome,” but its products seemed to spread that same derangement to everyone else. The devices that were supposed to make us smarter and more connected to other humans were actually messing with our minds, causing “net brain” and “monkey mind,” as well as physical disorders associated with long hours of sitting.

As we click between Twitter and Facebook, text and hypertext, one link and another, synapses are being formed and then broken with febrile inconstancy — or so a growing number of experts, such as MIT’s Sherry Turkle, warn us — leaving the neuronal scaffolding too fragile to house large thoughts.

A less arrogant industry might have settled for warning labels on its phones and pads, but Silicon Valley wanted an instant cure, preferably one that was hi-tech and marketable. The great advantage of mindfulness was that it seemed to be based firmly on science; no “hippie bullshit” or other “woo woo” was involved.

A neuroscientist reported that Buddhist monks with about ten thousand hours of meditation under their belts had altered brain functions; shorter bouts of meditation seemed to work at least temporary changes in novices. The field of “contemplative neuroscience” was born, and Silicon Valley seized on it for a much-needed “neural hack.” Through meditation, monastic or app-guided, anyone could reach directly into their own moist brain tissue and “resculpt” it in a calmer, more attentive direction. Mindfulness, as its promoters put it, fosters “neuroplasticity.”

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Beth and Lily Calmly Monitor Farmers Market Traffic

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Oscar Wilde

"I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies."
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

Harold Pinter

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless... while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

Chickenhawks Galore

Peace

"A man of peace is not a pacifist; a man of peace is simply a pool of silence. He pulsates a new kind of energy into the world, he sings a new song. He lives in a totally new way his very way of live is that of grace, that of prayer, that of compassion. Whomsoever he touches, he creates more love-energy. The man of peace is creative. He is not against war, because to be against anything is to be at war. He is not against war; he simply understands why war exists. And out of that understanding he becomes peaceful. Only when there are many people who are pools of peace, silence, understanding, will the war disappear."